Sweet Home City Manager Craig Martin, City Attorney Robert Snyder will meet with Linn County Affordable Housing and its attorney to develop a proposal for LCAH to pay systems development charges it owes on its Ames Creek Court project.
LCAH Executive Director Diana Cvitanovich made a presentation to the City Council last week regarding the $32,000 in fees, which are apparently a year and a half overdue.
“For two full years, our organization was working with the Public Works Department,” Cvitanovich told the City Council. The bill for the SDCs came after the project received approval for occupancy and after the grant that built Ames Creek Court closed out.
There have been implications of impropriety, Cvitanovich said. “We want to show … that there has been no impropriety on anyone’s part.”
LCAH received an estimate of $30,000 in SDCs from Public Works in January, 1998, Cvitanovich said. LCAH received its certificate of occupancy in June 1999. A permit bill was issued prior to that for about $16,000, and LCAH paid that bill.
Public Works billed LCAH for the SDCs in August 1999, Cvitanovich said. The bill was after an Ames Creek resident mistakenly went to City Hall to find out where to pay the water bill. City Hall had no record of the project and contacted Public Works. That was when Public Works realized it forgot to bill LCAH.
LCAH contacted Martin in August 1999 to discuss the SDCs, Cvitanovich said. LCAH had budgeted $36,000 for permit fees and SDCs. The bill for the SDCs exceeded that budgeted figure, and the grant had closed.
Without the bill, as the project neared completion, it appeared to have more money as a result, Cvitanovich said. That money was put into things pulled from the original project to save money, including a community garden and flower pots.
Had LCAH been billed, it would have paid it, Cvitanovich said. “It was a simple error in timing, and it came after the project closed.”
In addition to that, Public Works required an on-site treatment facility for wastewater.
“SDCs are calculated to mitigate the impact to the overall system by providing upgrades according to need,” Cvitanovich said. “The on-site treatment system already reduces impact to the total system and presented a substantial on-site investment.”
Eight of 32 units at Ames Creek Court are connected to the city’s sewer system. The rest use the on-site treatment facility, which meters a portion of its effluent to the city sewer.
Most of the treatment facility’s effluent must be drained annually by Sweet Home Sanitation at a cost of $1,000, Cvitanovich said. “We think an adjustment could be made to calculate the reality of on-site mitigation of wastewater impact. Thirty units elsewhere certainly impact the total system differently.”
Cvitanovich asked the City Council to waive the SDCs, consider LCAH’s stream and riparian restoration of 3.5 acres along Ames Creek as an offset or to reduce the cost to reflect the requirement for an on-site treatment plant.
“You knew you would have SDCs didn’t you?” Councilman Robert G. Danielson said. “When you go into the store to get a bag of groceries, you know you’re going to have to pay for every single item…. We shouldn’t have to hound you to pay.”
That fact that LCAH had money left over should have been a tip-off, Danielson said. “You’re supposed to know the law.”
“The city is supposed to know how to bill its bills,” Cvitanovich replied.
Several other councilmen suggested that LCAH work with City of Sweet Home staff to develop a proposal for the costs and how it might be paid.
“I personally think there’s two errors here, an error on their side and an error on our own side,” Councilman Dick Hill said.